1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to methods for ejecting a liquid material containing a high-performance material. The invention also relates to methods for manufacturing an organic electroluminescence (EL) device and methods for manufacturing a color filter both using the aforementioned methods.
2. Related Art
In recent years, droplet ejecting methods (ink jet methods) have been attracting attention, in which devices such as metal wiring, light-emitting elements, and color filters are formed on a substrate by ejecting droplets of a liquid material containing a high-performance material onto the substrate in a drawing manner. In such droplet ejecting methods used in forming the aforementioned devices, a liquid material of a required volume can be provided in a required site (target position or region). From the viewpoint of resource and energy saving, for example, the droplet ejecting methods are highly notable.
The demand for accuracy in forming the aforementioned devices has been increasing. That is, it is required that droplets be ejected toward a substrate with a high landing position accuracy. For example, JP-A-2004-58282 discloses an ink jet recording method capable of controlling the droplet landing position. The method includes a nozzle-information generating step for generating nozzle information indicating ejection characteristics of nozzles on the basis of the landing state of ink droplets ejected through the nozzles onto a recording medium, an estimating step for estimating, on the basis of the nozzle information and recording data, the influence of the ejected ink droplets upon an image to be formed, a correction-information generating step for generating, on the basis of the result of the estimation, correction information for correcting the droplet ejection state of the nozzles, and a controlling step for controlling a nozzle driving operation on the basis of the recording data and the correction information.
In this ink jet recording method, a main scanning direction in which a recording head having a row of nozzles is moved over the recording medium while ejecting ink droplets is defined as the X direction, and a nozzle-row direction (sub-scanning direction) in which the nozzles are arranged is defined as the Y direction. Further, head correction is performed for nozzles that have caused errors in the droplet landing positions. In this head correction, unevenness in concentration caused by errors in the droplet landing positions is estimated in a virtual ideal recording matrix MT defined on the recording medium. Then, to correct the unevenness, a driving signal relating to the ejection operation using nozzles estimated to cause errors in the landing positions is controlled. Thus, the volume of ejection is changed, for example.
In such a head correcting method, however, it is still difficult to accurately control the droplet landing position. Landing position errors in the X direction are considered to be correctable by correcting the position of the recording head moving in the X direction, i.e., by correcting the nozzle position relative to the recording medium. However, no specific method for accurately controlling landing position errors in the nozzle-row direction (Y direction) has been described in JP-A-2004-58282.